A09918:484
An evident display of Popish practises, or patched Pelagianism Wherein is mightily cleared the…An euident display of Popish practises, or patched Pelagianisme Wherein is mightelie cleared the…
An evident display of Popish practises, or patched Pelagianism Wherein is mightily cleared the sovereign truth of Gods eternal predestination, the staid groundwork of our most assured safety by Christ. Written in Latin by that reverend father, master Theodore Beza, and now lately Englished by VV.H. preacher of the Gospel.An euident display of Popish practises, or patched Pelagianisme Wherein is mightelie cleared the soueraigne truth of Gods eternall predestination, the stayd groundworke of oure most assured safetie by Christ. Written in Latin by that reuerend father, mayster Theodore Beza, and now lately Englished by VV.H. preacher of the Gospell.
London: printed by Ralph Newberie, 1578
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
No I trow, seeing that there cometh to the son whatsoever the father hath given him, whereof it followeth,1 that they indeed can not believe, whom the father hath not given to his son, and those which come to the son,2 not to be therefore given to the son, because they believe: but contrarily, that they therefore believe,3 because they are given to the son, in whom verily they were elected before the foundations of the world were laid, and finally that those which are given to the son,4 can not but believe, which impossibility is not in their nature, but dependeth of the virtue given from above. For the power of the Spirit of God is effectual in them whom the Lord draweth, that not only the power of believing, but the very effect of power also, that is faith, might be ministered. Which things seeing they are so, how is it that thou wilt have that note, not so much universal, as infinite, to appertain to every one, and that Christ should differ from himself? for if the world (as thou comprehendest also those to whom the Gospel is either not preached, or preached in vain) in these words be called of Christ, how is it that in another place he sayeth, that he prayeth not for the World? But whereto is it to prosecute these with so many words? Christ doth not simply call all to him self, but the weary and loaden, that is, those which mourn under the burden of sins, and as it were are overladen, or (as David speaketh) which are of an humble and contrite heart. Prone that all men are such, or confess that this speech of ⟨p. 266⟩Christ maketh nothing to the strengthening of thine error. But go to, let us come to the rest. That which thou sayest that God doeth minister good and honest affections, we think by experience that it is most true, as they which find sufficiently by proof that we are not apt of our selves so much as to think that which is good, but this we say is proper to the children of God: for they only are moved with the Spirit of God. That which proceedeth from the rest, we say that it is sin before God, albeit to mans judgement it have a show of goodness.